


Seven Years

by explicitmoxley



Category: Chess - Rice/Ulvaeus/Andersson
Genre: Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Homelessness, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Sexual Abuse, Pre-Canon, Trans Male Character, also during and possibly post-canon, alternating pov, will add more tags as it develops
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:07:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23268199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/explicitmoxley/pseuds/explicitmoxley
Summary: Florence and Freddie knew each other for seven years, and then they didn’t.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 6





	Seven Years

Freddie’s first attempt at a professional chess career wasn’t going so well.

Sure, he was winning pretty often, because he knew his shit. But it wasn’t like it was supposed to be. He had thought he’d be taking the world by storm, dominating tournaments, destroying all comers. That was what he’d told himself for the past decade and what had somehow kept him alive for this long, but it wasn’t becoming reality. Tournaments took a lot of time and effort and half the time, the prize money was barely enough to cover the entry fee. If he even won, that is. Day by day, the dream seemed to be slipping away from him.

Running away at 18 had seemed like the most natural thing in the world, and truth be told, it was easy. His mother and stepfather probably didn’t even notice he was gone until days later, and likely were more upset about the fact that he’d stolen money from them than they were to see him go. The bus ticket from Boston to New York was cheap enough, but that left him with a bit of money and not a hell of a lot of prospects. Aside from chess, the only thing he had going for him was a measly high school diploma, hard earned though it was. Useless.

After the first few nights of roughing it, Freddie had made a few friends. Well, “friends” was a strong word. He’d met some people he could get high with who didn’t annoy him too much. Some nights, one of them would give him a hot meal, drugs, and a place to stay in exchange for a quick fuck. Freddie had spent enough time counting ceiling tiles and waiting for it to be over back home for it to be second nature. It was almost as much a part of him as the red, angry scars that remained as a reminder of his former life, each one telling a story he’d never admit aloud. An hour spent sobbing and scrubbing his skin raw in the shower afterwards seemed like a small price to pay for a safe place to rest and a few bumps of blow to get him started in the morning.

On other nights, he’d camp out on park benches, crushing and snorting little white pills he only sort of knew the contents of to stay alert and smoking stolen cigs to take the edge off the hunger that seemed his only consistent companion these days. He was trying to get the money together for a place of his own, to actually support himself instead of just letting men use him over and over again, but his ever-increasing dependence on drugs just to go to his garbage day job or play a half-decent game of chess was impeding that effort pretty soundly.

And “half-decent” was the perfect way to describe his play, these days. It was still foundationally sound, but all the unfortunate yet inevitable side effects of abusing stimulants were starting to catch up with him. He made stupid mistakes, ones he’d never make were he in his right mind. Whatever that meant, anymore. On top of that, humiliation of humiliations, he had to play on the women’s circuit. What else could he do? It wasn’t like he could pass for a man, or even for a boy, despite the fact that he’d known he was one since the age of five. Over the years, he’d heard whispers of other people like him, of medication, of surgery, but fuck, he hadn’t even been to a doctor in years. All of that seemed so far outside of the realm of possibility that he wouldn’t allow himself to dare hope for it.

Freddie had been living that way for almost a year now. His 19th birthday had passed unnoticed and uncelebrated, and it was starting to get cold. The first winter, he’d spent some time in homeless shelters, but the way he looked and dressed and simply was had earned him enough threats and harassment for him to stop considering that an option. He could handle a few harsh words, no problem, but no fucking way was he about to let himself be a victim again. No. He had run away for a goddamn reason.

That conviction didn’t leave him with a whole lot of options, though. His shaking hands had started to worry him weeks ago, and just a few days prior, he’d woken up dazed on someone’s floor to be told he’d had some kind of seizure. The fragility of his health was becoming harder and harder to ignore. Realistically, he couldn’t say if he would make it through another winter. Not without his situation changing drastically.

Freddie forced himself to close his eyes, the lumpy couch beneath him providing little comfort in the deafening quiet of some guy’s shitty apartment. He knew he’d have to be out come sunrise. All this rumination, it looked like, would do absolutely fuck all for him. He would have to figure something out, and fast, but for now, getting some rest was probably in his best interest.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow, he’d figure some shit out. He’d said that to himself a thousand times before, but this time, he had to believe he meant it. He refused to allow himself to accept the alternative: let himself die out here, alone, anonymous, another fuck-up in a city of millions. Just another bullshit dream splintered under the weight of reality. No way he could let that be him. Not fucking him.


End file.
